things of me.'

'His saying them does not make them true.'

'He is my brother. He has the only right to me. If I must choose
between him and my uncle, he must be mine--mine.'

'You have not to choose between him and your uncle. You have to choose
between right and wrong, between his frenzy and his true good.'

'My brother! my brother! I go with my brother!' was still her vehement
cry. Without listening to her cousin's last words, she made a gesture
to put him aside, and rose to hurry to her brother.

But Louis stood before her, and spoke gravely. 'Very well. Yield
yourself to his management. Go back to be another burden upon a
household, poor enough already to sour him with cares. Let him tell
your uncle that both his brother's children loathe the fruit of the
self-sacrifice of a lifetime. Transgress your grandmother's wishes;
condemn that poor man to a desolate, objectless, covetous old age; make
the breach irreconcilable for ever; and will James be the better or the
happier for your allowing his evil temper the full swing?'

Clara wrung her hands. 'My uncle! Yes, what shall I do with my uncle?
If I could only have them both?'

'This way you would have neither. Keep the straight path, and you may
end in having both.'

'Straight--I don't know what straight is! It must be right to cling to
my own brother in his noble poverty. Oh! that he should imagine me
caring for this horrid, horrid state and grandeur!'

Louis recurred to the old argument, that James did not know what he was
saying, and recalled her to the remembrance of what she had felt to be
the right course before James's ebullition. She owned it most
reluctantly; but oh! she said, would James still forgive her, and not
believe such dreadful things, but trust and be patient with her, and
perhaps Uncle Oliver might after all be set on going to Peru, and
beyond remonstrance. Then it would all come right--no, not right, for
granny had dreaded his going. Confused and distressed by the
conflicting claims, Clara was thankful for the present respite given to
her by Louis's promise that his father should sound her uncle as to his
wishes and intentions. Lord Ormersfield's upright, unimpassioned
judgment appeared like a sort of refuge from the conflict of the
various claims, and he was besides in a degree, her guardian, being the
sole executor of the only will which Mrs. Frost had ever made, soon
after the orphans came under her charge, giving t